State of modern music - couldn't agree more

Kerry,

I read what you wrote on your biography and Inspirations pages about music that actively avoids sounding good. I really agree with you and think that many people who aspire to write music suffer greatly due to the beautiful music that has already been written. I think there is the constant fear that the composer will be compared to Beethoven or Brahms or Mozart, and they therefore decide to shun all of the vocabulary that those great composers developed. The result is often music that cannot reach into the heart and fill it with emotion.

I in part blame this on the academic nature of studying composition at the university. I'm not sure at all that one learns composition by taking classes. My wife once considered doing a composition degree. She had written her first piece ever, a cello sonata which is tonal and quite beautiful. We took it to the head of the composition department at one of the universities where I studied and played it for him. This was her first piece ever and it was an incredible achievement, with a rich understanding of harmony and a well constructed sonata form and carefully developed themes that appear cyclically in the movements.

He listened, unimpressed, and after hearing one movement asked which composer my wife turns to for inspiration, "who do you strive to emulate?".

Her reply, "nobody, really" wan't what he was looking for so he refined the question.

"Who is your favorite composer?".

This she answered earnestly and concretely, "Schubert".

His answer encapsulated the whole problem with being a composer today; "But you know you can't write music like Shubert, don't you?".

Robert Douglass
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